Post by noah on Oct 16, 2009 2:59:19 GMT -5
I Saw a Stork Butcher a Baby
Muddy water splashed onto the sidewalk, coating the cement with old wrappers, discarded lollipop sticks and FLASH FLOOD coupons. I stepped out of the bus without thanking the driver and onto solid ground. My bus legs bent under my stillness and I lit a cigarette to calm the sways. The rain had come, and it had stopped, but it hadn't washed the filth away. The smell of carbon filled my nostrils as the bus lurched forward, splashing more puddles and dashing more bike riders. The rain hadn't washed any of it away, it had just brought it all to the surface. The drains had long since been clogged during the drought and now the rain just created muddied, stagnant pools of oily trash water.
I stood there still, at the bus stop, wondering which way to go. I could go left but I could also go right. I was wrong handed but right brained. I thought about catching another bus but I didn't want to sit down on the wet bench and I didn't want to stand underneath these pelicans.
The pelicans were straddling the telephone wires. They leered at me, and followed me with their gaze, even though I wasn't moving. I took a deep drag from my cigarette.
"Keep moving," a bold one said. I nodded and crossed the street. A car slammed on its brakes with a squeal and turned sharply to its left. No one in this town knew how to drive when it rained, I thought. I proceeded backwards from the bus stop and down a hill. My sneakers squeaked a little on the slick cobblestones of the old town road that made the cars driving on it go bump, bumpity, bump. It wasn't cold but I wore a jacket anyway. Wool, and double breasted, it used to belong to a man who lived in east Germany during, and probably after, World War 2. I inherited it when I shot and stole it from his son, or maybe grandson, or maybe it was his father. I ran my fingers over the gray wool, and through one of the many holes that pocked the front of the coat. I liked it better this way because I could scratch myself without removing the fastenings.
Above the slippery rock road were more telephone wires but no pelicans. Instead there were doves mottled with blue, green, purple and brown. They cat called at me as I passed underneath. What I thought was another coo, a coy call, was actually a woman shouting at the top of her lungs. Her shrieks came from the 5th floor window of a red brick tenement building to my wrong. I looked up, hurting my neck to actually see the top of the building. Dirty water dripped from the windowsills and dropletted on my forehead. The water slid from my brow to the bridge of my nose and avalanched into my right eye. It stung, but I kept it open. With one last drag I put out the cigarette and smeared it into the ground. My flat soled, poor tractioned shoes pivoted effortlessly on a smooth cobblestone and the cigarette would float with the rest of the trash when the next rain comes.
I floated to the open 5th floor window where the woman was shouting from. My hands gripped the cement windowsill from below and I pulled myself up by my calloused hands and dirty fingernails. Hanging cross armed from the windowsill, I put my chin on my forearms and watched the scene unfold.
"WHY?!" The woman shouted, again and again.
"A man has needs!" shouted a man. I was at the kitchen window, and the man paced around, completely nude. His graying skin clung to his young bones and dried them significantly on the joints by his elbows and his knees. He had a full set of hair, and body hair, but his hair was receding from his forehead. Even still, his forehead was small, but the receding hairline and his beady black eyes accentuated just how much skin was comparatively on his forehead.
"But what about us? WHAT ABOUT ME?! WHAT ABOUT THE BABY?!" the woman screamed. She was standing in the doorway of the kitchen and an adjacent room. Her blonde hair was probably slightly curly, but it was now disheveled with only hints of man-made curl left in it. A muddy white sheet was curled around her with one arm. Her other arm hung at her side, her clenched, red fist weighing it down to the earth.
"HA. You won't ever have to worry about the baby ever again!" The man shouted. It wasn't until this that I noticed that there was a baby on the kitchen table. The baby was lying on an unswaddled napkin, naked and screaming this entire time.
"What are you talking about?!" the woman cried. The man laughed and leaped onto the edge of the long kitchen table.
"I will show you!" The dining room table leaned excitedly toward the ground upon the first impact from the jump but quieted down instantly. The naked man loomed over the child. He peered his beady eyes down his elongated nose and he bared his teeth. Blackened gingivitis had claimed the area where his ivory teeth met his engorged and infected gums. My eyes opened wide as he reached a sinewy arm and tore off the baby's right hand. The woman collapsed to her knees, sobbing.
"This is for all the times you were too tired," the man sneered, tearing off a finger. He leaned his neck back, as I had just earlier, and he dropped the finger into his mouth. He made an exaggerated swallowing sound, so loud that you could hear it over the crying woman and over the screaming child. "This is for all the times you had a headache," he shouted and ate another finger. "This is for all the times when I was too drunk! This is for all the times when I missed a stupid date for work to keep you fed. This is for all the times I didn't get along with your parents!"
"You can't do this, he's our son," the woman wailed pitifully. All the force had left her voice, and she leaned helpless on the wooden door frame.
"I can do whatever I want, and do you know why?! Because I don't love you!" the man shouted, tearing off an arm from the baby. He tore into it ravenously, letting the blood drip down into his albino chest hair. "You stopped caring about how you looked after the baby, but did you ever think that I might care?! NO," he said between mouthfuls.
"The baby, the baby..."
"To hell with this baby, and to hell with you! If you cared about my needs, I wouldn't have had to sleep around!" the man shouted, tearing into the baby's other appendages with renewed zeal. The baby's cries became coughs as spittle and blood began to pool in the back of its throat.
"No, god, please, god," the woman pleaded, still from her slumped position.
"To hell with this baby! To hell with you! I don't need either of you, and I never did! I never would have married you if you hadn't been so stupid as to get knocked up," he had begun to work on the legs now.
"But, but, but..."
"SHUTUP! Why won't you or this baby ever SHUT UP!?" the man picked up the baby by its battered rib cage, it thrashing weakly and still crying. He gaped open his maw and stretched out his neck. He consumed the baby, as whole as it still was, in one bite and crushed it down into his gut. He stood triumphant upon the table and began to kick dishes and glasses off. He grinned through his reddened teeth at the woman who had long ago entered a state of shock. His lean long legs were knobbed at the knees and bony at the ankles. His toes curled over the edge of the table as he leaned down to stare at the woman. His spine protruded from his back like a small, ancient mountain: ridged and blunted from weather. "And I'm leaving you," he said in a loud whisper. The woman let out a small moan. The man stood and laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
Suddenly, he clutched his distended belly, and I could see the shivers and shakes. Small undulations, not unlike wavelengths, ran over his stomach and he scratched at his belly with yellowed fingernails. He doubled over on top of the stained oak dining table and hacked. He coughed and sputtered and continued to hack. His throat bulged and grew as something emerged. His jaw cracked open and I could hear bones popping out of joint. A child's wispy haired head regurgitated itself from the man's mouth. Covered in saliva and bile, the child, all limbs intact, all digits in place, flopped onto the table and wriggled in defiance. Scars, stitches and splints riddled the tiny, torn and broken body. The baby stretched with renewed strength and regrown muscles. The man howled with rage and clenched his teeth. He wheeled about on his heels and faced the window I was looking in on. He took two steps and lunged from table to windowsill as I pulled my head back just enough to avoid being stepped on.
He perched on the windowsill, his hands clutching the concrete base, his knees up by his ears, his shriveled genitalia swinging freely above my head. He stood fully erect and braced himself against the entire window frame.
"AND IM NEVER COMING BACK!" He shouted and spread his arms out and jumped. I looked back into the kitchen and the lady had already begun to move. She let the bedsheet fall from her also naked body, and she wrapped the baby, now stronger than before, snugly. She held the baby against her exposed breasts and cradled him gently. She rocked him back and forth and dried her still moist eyes on her shoulder. Her mascara made black streaks across the pale skin.
"There, there, it'll be okay. It will all be okay." I placed my chin back on my forearms and watched them still. She rocked him further until he dozed off. "There, there. That's right. It will be okay. I know it will."